Blueberry Patch Enclosure

Two things happened this past week that have been hopes and on the table for discussion for some time.  

1.  We planted blueberry bushes 6 years ago when we first moved into our house.  The enclosures started out as individual for each plant.  But then they grew out of them each year.  So some of the enclosures got bigger.  Last year, I convinced the Laird to move some of the plants into the mostly formed 2 rows and build a row enclosure.  And while it looked a bit better to have 2 long row enclosures, it did not help the "pleasure of picking berries" factor.  We would have to reach over or under the fence and get all tangled up in netting.  And the kids really couldn't do either of those things.  So while the formed enclosures prevented the kids and every other creature from eating all the berries... it made for very difficult picking.  For a few years I have suggested making a fenced blueberry patch- to keep the deer and birds out, but allow for people to go inside to pick berries.  The hesitation has always been having a large structure in the middle of the yard, blocking the view... and the amount of mulch it would take to cover the entire area... and worry that it would become a weed patch (like our garden).  And up until last week, that stance has stood quite firm.  But I think he just got tired of making and fixing the enclosures.every.single.spring!  And we figured out that we could leave the grass path down the middle, and if we made a gate wide enough, we could just ride the mower down the center and keep things tidy.

2.  A couple years ago, I got the itch to have a green house.  One of those beautiful ones built out of an eclectic collection of old windows.  You know what I am talking about... think pinterest.  The Laird suggested that we could pick up a kit from Lowes for much cheaper.  I responded that cheap isn't aesthetically appealing, and if it's going to be in our yard, we might as well put some effort and creativity into it.  Like we did for our chicken coop- something we are quite proud of.  So I found a seller on craigslist, and we went and picked up about 8 or 9 windows.  At some point, we abandoned our initial idea of building the green house against the house.   And those said windows have been sitting in our garage for at least 2 years now.  And the discussion turned towards whether or not it was really worth the time and money, and the fact that we no longer liked the initial plan... that if we were to build a free standing green house, we were going to need to find a bunch more windows, for cheap.  Well it turned out that some friends had all the windows replaced and were willing to give us the windows.  We checked them out and were interested.  But with other projects and goals, we never acted upon them.  The greenhouse goal did not seem as important- it just felt like a whole lot of work and money.  Up until last week.

                                                                                   Well last week, the tides changed.  Somehow the Laird came around to both ideas- he picked up the windows,  and got materials for the blueberry enclosure.  And here we are.  This weekend we got that blueberry enclosure started and finished!!  It feels amazing to start and finish a project.  And I spent a good amount of time working out a plan for the walls of our proposed green house, and laying out some ideas.  The Laird started siting the location and figuring out what we needed to do to get the location ready.  But that is a much larger project and we have a few other smaller and more pressing tasks to accomplish before we dive into this green house.  But the hope is that we can start and finish by the end of the summer, so that this time next year we will be starting our seeds in our green house.

It's really amazing to work together on projects we are both excited about.  I am not sure how or why the Laird finally came around, because I had become content with not doing either.  Less work for sure.  But I am excited to see some of these hopes being realized.